Alisa Brownlee, ATP, CAPS blog offers recent articles and web information on ALS, assistive technology--augmentative alternative communication (AAC), computer access, and other electronic devices that can impact and improve the quality of life for people with ALS.
Email--abrownlee@alsa-national.org.
Any views or opinions presented on this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the ALS Association.

Follow by Email

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Researchers have come up with a device that may enable
people who are completely unable to speak or move at all to nevertheless manage
unscripted back-and-forth conversation. The key to such silent and still
communication is the first real-time, brain-scanning speller.

The new technology builds on groundbreaking earlier uses of fMRI brain scans to assess consciousness in people described as being in an unconscious, vegetative state and to enable them to answer yes and no questions. fMRI (or functional magnetic resonance imaging) is typically used for clinical and research purposes to track brain activity by measuring blood flow.

"The work of Adrian Owen and colleagues led me to wonder whether it might even become possible to use fMRI, mental tasks, and appropriate experimental designs to freely encode thoughts, letter-by-letter, and therewith enable back-and-forth communication in the absence of motor behavior," said Bettina Sorger of Maastricht University in The Netherlands.

The new evidence shows that the answer to that thought question is yes. Sorger's team came up with a letter-encoding technique that requires almost no pre-training. Participants in their study voluntarily selected letters on a screen, which guided the letter encoding; for each specific character, participants were asked to perform a particular mental task for a set period of time. That produced 27 distinct brain patterns corresponding to each letter of the alphabet and the equivalent of a space bar, which could be automatically decoded in real-time using newly developed data analysis methods.

In each communication experiment, participants held a mini-conversation consisting of two open questions and answers. Everyone the researchers tested was able to successfully produce answers within a single one-hour session.

The results substantially extend earlier uses of fMRI, which allowed individuals to answer the equivalent of multiple-choice questions having four or fewer possible answers, by enabling free-letter spelling. That could make all the difference for people who are completely paralyzed and unable to benefit from other means of alternative communication, Sorger says.

Ultimately, she says their goal is to transfer the fMRI technology they've developed to a more portable and affordable method for measuring blood flow, such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

The Wireless
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (Wireless RERC), creator of access
to wireless technologies to people with disabilities, is inviting developers
to submit proposals to obtain financial support for creating assistive and/or
accessibility apps for popular mobile platforms like iOS, Android, Blackberry
10, and Windows Phone.

The Wireless RERC's
app development budget is approximately $90k, and the idea is to support the
development of four new apps per grant year. The app will be released through
every platform's appropriate channel (App Store, Google Play, etc.) or
through Wireless RERC's App Factory.
If the app is successful, the developer may be offered additional funding to
add more features or to create the app for an additional platform.

Proposals will be
evaluated on the following parameters:

§The app addresses an
important accessibility or assistive technology need.

§The app is unlikely to
be developed in the commercial marketplace.

§The app is technically
feasible and the technical capacity required for development is readily
demonstrable by the developer.

§The projected lifetime
of the app justifies the investment.

§The projected lifetime
of the app justifies the investment.The app complements and does not
duplicate other apps in the marketplace or under development.

For the 2012-13 grant
year, proposals need to be submitted by 15 September, 2012, and the final
apps need to be delivered by August 10, 2013.

To read more details
about the Call for Proposals, visit the website here.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The HHS Partnership Center continues to host a series
of interactive webinars discussing the benefits and provisions of the health
care law, the Affordable Care Act.

All webinars are open to the public and include a
question and answer session where you can ask HHS staff any question you may
have about the health care law. Please submit questions you would like to have
answered on the webinar to ACA101@hhs.gov.

To participate in one of the webinars,
please select your preferred dates from the list below and submit the necessary
information.